One of the biggest perks of studying Jonathan Edwards at Yale is the treasure trove that is the Beinecke Library. Though a strange looking building on the outside (it’s been described as a giant, granite egg crate), deep underground lies what is estimated to be nearly 95% of the extant manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards as well as several pieces of ephemera. The “Jonathan Edwards and his World” class had the distinct privilege of visiting the library for a presentation of several key pieces of the Beinecke Edwards collection.

(Note: pictures, understandably, were not allowed inside the library; however, the Beinecke’s website has digital images of many of the pieces in their collection; if images of the works mentioned here are available, they have been linked)

Before getting into the Edwards pieces, however, our instructors had a couple of other treats for us. 2009 marks the 500th birthday of John Calvin, and the Beinecke holds a copy of the earliest French edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, printed in 1541. A very rare book, this would have been 1 of about 500 in the print run. The second non-Edwards piece we got to see and touch was quite fascinating. Isaac Newton first published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or simply Principia Mathematica, in 1687. In the early 18th century, around 1714-15, a 1713 copy of the Principia was presented to the Yale Library. This copy was presented by none other than Isaac Newton himself, most likely a copy donated from his own collection. Edwards, highly interested in philosophical pursuits, read and very much appreciated Newton’s Principia (the title page to the Beinecke’s 1687 first edition, here, and a page from the 1713 edition that we saw, here.

After these two pieces, it was time for the main attraction. We started with a couple of Edwards’s notebooks, one from his miscellanies collection and then the Images or Shadows of Divine Things notebook. I had seen a couple of Edwards manuscripts before, in a previous visit to the Beinecke, as well as numerous manuscript pictures, most of which were very hard to read and decipher. So it was interesting to see that, the miscellanies notebook especially, these notebooks were written quite clearly and legibly. We were also able to see one of the notebooks that Edwards used to prepare his treatise on Freedom of the Will. This notebook is quite peculiar in the irregularly shaped pages, as you can see in the linked picture. These pages are such because they are the scraps from paper fans that his daughters made in order to make some extra money. After these notebooks was one of my favorite pieces of Edwardsiana, the Blank Bible (sample pages here and here). Given to Edwards by Benjamin Pierpont, relative to his wife Sarah, the Blank Bible is an unbound King James Bible, rebound with blank, columned paper between the Bible sheets for the purpose of notes and commentary on Scripture.

After these notebooks, there was an opportunity to look at several sermon manuscripts, the pièce de résistance, of course, being the manuscript of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards’s sermon manuscripts are quite interesting in that most of them are hand-sewn booklets, the pages of which are 4″x4″. The writing is diminutive and the pages are cluttered with strike-throughs, erratic notations, and other markings. It’s a wonder that Edwards himself could read them, let alone preach from them!

Several other Edwards manuscripts were presented, which I won’t go into further, and we then moved into items related to Edwards. The first of these is alleged to be a small swatch from Sarah’s wedding dress. A second piece of material was an embroidered bedsheet said to have been made by Esther Stoddard Edwards, Jonathan’s mother. A final item that I will mention may have been my favorite piece that we saw, surprising in it not being an Edwards manuscript. Edwards youngest son, Jonathan, Jr., a pastor like his father, was highly interested in the historical linguistics of Native Americans. In 1787 he published a study of the Mahican language, a language he was well familiar with having grow up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where his father was a missionary from 1751-1758. One of the people to receive an early copy of this study was the new president-elect of the neonate American Republic, General George Washington. What we go to see was a letter from Washington to Jonathan Edwards, Jr. acknowledging receipt of the “pamphlet,” and encouraging the younger Edwards to continue to pursue the study of Native American language. It’s not often that one holds a document written by the father of our nation.

This trip to the Beinecke was truly remarkable experience, and I sincerely thank Ken and Adriaan for taking the class there and showing us all that magnificent stuff!

Filed under:
JEahW June 2009, blank bible, freedom of the will, jec at yale, the miscellanies